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Theorising Narratives of Revolution in the Russian and Global Media

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Theorising Narratives of Revolution in the Russian and Global Media Theorising Narratives of Revolution in the Russian and Global Media Ben O’Loughlin, [email protected] ISA 2019, Toronto, 27-30 March. Panel FA24 Strategic Narratives and Frame Contestation: Unifying a Fractured Paradigm Abstract This paper examines conflicting narratives of revolution emerging from Russia and in global media responses to the 100th anniversary of October 1917. I first examine the contradictory responses from the Putin regime and mainstream Russian media. Putin initially re-narrated 1917 as an example of Western exploitation of victim- Russia’s idealistic role in the world, then downplayed 1917 entirely due to domestic political sensitivities. Yet RT and other Russian media offered often celebratory accounts of 1917. This indicates the difficulty identifying a stable official narrative. Analysis of international news media and cultural industry coverage (26 countries) also indicates diverse and often celebratory narratives, a cultural fondness for Russian history, and lay theories of how revolution works today -- after the failures of the Arab Spring, Occupy and some Color Revolutions. 1917 for many was culturally congruent only as a 'global' event, like May 68 or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Overall, these diverse internal and external responses complicate the notion of a singular ‘Russian narrative’ or 'narrative of Russia'. This opens space to theorize the conditions of such narrative fragmentation, the difficulty that neo-authoritarian regimes face when managing global media. Relation to panel theme 1. This paper shows that the anniversary of 1917 created ambivalent identity narratives in Russia and markedly different narratives of global relations to Russia in the West to in ‘the rest’. This demonstrates the difficulty of any total narrative control in a global public sphere; history is too messy, within and beyond any nation. Normatively this is a reminder of the messiness of the present and the need to avoid simplifications. This analysis shows why Russia should not only have to be considered in terms of disinformation. Russia faces the same problems of identity management all states face. By placing Russia outside the disinformation question in this paper I am trying to gain a better understanding of what Russia is trying to do and what others think of Russia. This might help disinformation studies. 1 2. A political communication theory of disinformation must be reframed with a political science theory of ideas, identity and political change in the international order. Disinformation is one of many efforts to shift behaviour, and it works by playing to ideas and identities across the international order. One of the many tensions in the current international order is a political struggle between authoritarian populist kleptocracy and liberal democracy. The strategic narrative research programme is an attempt to offer a wider theorisation that meets that type of wider political struggle. It tries to explain how ideas, identity and political change come together through communication and the conditions that drive these changes. 3. Strategic narrative research cuts across IR: Strategic narrative research must be done by materialist scholars to show how narratives express interests and explain who has the economic and infrastructural capacity to determine whose narratives circulate. Constructivist IR scholars can identity when narrative entrepreneurs are successful and when not. Post-structural IR scholars can help us explain the historical roots of, and contradictions within, the wider narratives we see in today’s global political struggle. Disinformation as a tactic or tool of communication can be approached within all three of those IR positions. IR and Communication can be brought together. 4. I’m not a frame analyst and would be curious how the framing scholars might interpret my data and analysis via framing concepts. I also wrote this paper using the ‘imaginaries’ concept as much as narrative. Still, cultural congruence and identity narratives seem important points of overlap. Introduction The October Revolution stands alongside the French Revolution as a template (Hoskins, 2006), model (Anderson, 1991: 83) or script (Arsenault et al., 2015: 192) that guides sense-making about revolutionary moments since. It provides a set of assumptions about the nature of antagonism, momentum, victory and defeat, and revolution’s consequences. It is a way of imagining political change. This paper has two objectives. First it will map and explain how the October Revolution was imagined in different global media in the reporting of its anniversary in 2017. Second, it will use that analysis to consider the implications of these imaginaries for how revolutions are understood today. 2 This anniversary fell against a backdrop marked by conditions that shape how revolution is imagined. First was a set of highly contested recent revolutions, notably the post-Cold War Colour Revolutions in post-Soviet countries and the Arab uprising. These revolutions triggered public and scholarly efforts in the preceding decade to reconceptualise both revolution and, given the failures of some Arab revolutions, counter-revolution: socio-political processes that contain, defuse and co-opt revolutionary forces. Second, the centenary of 1917 occurred amid an already-thriving body of commentary about contemporary Russian politics: Putin as tsar, an undemocratic mass culture, and Russia as a 19th Century great power in a 21st Century world (Lo, 2015). The Putin government downplayed the centenary. In Russia since the end of the Cold War, celebration of World War II had far overtaken national celebration of the October Revolution. In 2017 the government delegated official celebrations to cultural organisations and municipal authorities beyond Moscow. The minority Communist Party held festivities. As we shall see below, this can be understood within the Putin government’s efforts to control a national identity narrative for the domestic population, a narrative that positions Colour Revolutions in post-Soviet states as Western-led threats to national stability. A professor of history in St. Petersburg told one German journalist, ‘even the idea of a revolution is branded as national treason’ (Spinella, 2017); another German writer suggested Putin suffered a ‘kind of revolution-phobia’ (Esch, 2017). However, opinion polls earlier in 2017 showed 48 percent of Russians felt the revolution played a positive role, to 31 percent negative, yet 49 percent felt it ultimately damaged Russian culture (Petkova, 2017). We shall see that in 2017 Putin and Russian society more generally offered diverse and ambivalent views of 1917 and the virtues of revolution and other models of social change. Indeed, amid much analyses about Russian efforts to 3 control narratives about Russia’s identity in the world (Szostek, 2017), the centenary was notable for the lack of any strong narrative global projection strategy from the Kremlin. Here was a global media event in which the meaning was left to global voices. Two research questions follow. First, how are revolutions theorised and imagined in contemporary global media? What comparisons and analogies did journalists offer readers when representing 1917 and its legacies? Were the French Revolution, Arab Uprisings, and Colour Revolutions the “go to” comparisons or did a more varied historical picture emerge? Second, how is Russian politics represented, reflected upon, and compared to other countries’ situations? I analyse international media representations of Russia’s official response to 1917 and their wider narratives about Russia in the world in their comments about 1917. Analysis also indicates ways that journalists represent their own country’s relation to Russia and to 1917; we find condemnation from some, but, in many non-Western news media, articles that suggest 1917 inspired independence or revolutionary movements in their own countries or remains relevant for keeping that vision or possibility alive. Analysis was conducted of news items published between 15 September 2017 - 31 December 2017. These were sampled through the Nexis global database of English language news and through a search for relevant news items on Twitter using three accounts to ensure user profile did not skew results. Search terms were “October Revolution”, “Russian Revolution” and “1917 + Russia”. The sample consisted of 114 articles from 26 countries. Thematic analysis allows for identification of constituent parts of “imaginaries” of political and social change. This analysis has significance for understanding how global media represent and imagine future change. Based on the memory work around 1917, representations of 4 later revolutions, and representations of Russia now, what range of scripts and theories become resources for thinking about change? What understandings of history and agency? Was 1917 used as a platform to think about future change or to close down avenues of thought and action? News reports point to role of leaders, technology, crises as opportunities, and so on, but also reflect on whether history repeats itself, whether systems and societies ever really change, and where revolutionary efforts have and have not succeeded. Analytical framework: Themes of Revolution The first research question asks, for global media in 2017, what is revolution, then and now? Analysis is divided into four themes. First, depictions of the 1917 Revolution. This includes: What happened (who, what, when, where, and why – what were
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